I've wanted to start interviewing some of the players in the digital identity space. I decided to start with Scott Lemon because he's a good friend and so I was sure I could count on him to be sympathetic to the technical problems I was sure I'd encounter. Here's the direct link to the MP3 and its on my podcast RSS feed as well. Scott was one of the leaders of Novell's Digital Me project, an early effort in digital identity. That project shaped Scott's views of what identity is and how digital systems can be built to support how we use it. I enjoyed the conversation.

My set-up was a JK Audio THAT-2 phone tap and two phones (Cisco VoIP phones on the BYU system)--one phone to drive sound into the mixer and one for me to talk on. I called into a conference bridge with both phones and so did Scott in an attempt to equalize my and Scott's levels. There were a few problems.

• First, you can hear me breathing, even though I was trying to minimize it. I guess I need a different set-up. Maybe a headset will work better.
• Second, the levels weren't as even as I'd have liked them. I was still louder than Scott and had to de-emphasize myself in some places.
• Lastly, there's a hum. I suspect that there's a ground loop problem between the phone tap and my mixer. I'm not sure what to do about that.

I did more post-processing this time and cleaned up some of the "ums," "ahs," and "you knows." Plus I removed a lot of dead air. All told I cut 6 minutes of cruft from a 40 minute recording. Interesting.

So, listen, enjoy, and please forgive my technical glitches. Hopefully I'll get better.